UNICEF Jordan
Terms of Reference
Evaluation of “UNICEF’s Emergency Psychosocial Support Response in Jordan”
Table of Contents
1. CONTEXT 2
2. PURPOSE 4
3. OBJECTIVES 5
4. SCOPE OF THE EVALUATION 6
5. EVALUATION CRITERIA 6
5.1 RELEVANCE 7
5.2 EFFICIENCY 7
5.3 EFFECTIVENESS 8
5.4 SUSTAINABILITY 8
6. APPROACH AND METHODOLOGY 9
7. ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES IN THE EVALUATION PROCESS 10
8. EVALUATION TEAM QUALIFICATIONS 11
9. DELIVERABLES AND SCHEDULE 12
10. BUDGET AND PAYMENTS 13
11. OFFICIAL TRAVEL INVOLVED 14
12. ASSESSMENT AND WEIGHTING CRITERIA OF THE PROPOSALS 14
13. SUBMISSION GUIDELINES 15
14. GUIDING PRINCIPLES AND VALUES 16
1. CONTEXT
Since March 2011, political and civil unrest in Syria has resulted in over 120,000 deaths, of which nearly 11,000 are children, and over 2.2 million registered displacements into surrounding and nearby countries, of which nearly a million are children. Over 9.3 million Syrians remain in need and 6.5 million remain displaced inside Syria creating the potential for further outpourings of refugees into surrounding countries. As of August 2014, 609,376 Syrians have been registered as refugee in Jordan with 52.53 per cent being children[1]. According to UNHCR registration data, more than 80% of all Syrian refugees in Jordan are living in host communities, with Amman and Irbid Governorates alone covering approximately 68% of the urban refugee population, while rest are in camps. Moreover, as a consequence of the increasing cost of housing and scarce livelihood opportunities, many families are moving to small villages in the outskirts of the big cities, to the poorest governorates such as Zarqa and Balqa, or to Palestinian camps in Irbid and Amman. In these areas services for Syrian refugees are dramatically lacking or completely absent which entails considerable psychosocial consequences for children and their families.
Irrespective of where Syrian refugees are living, their lives, especially those of children, are being shaped by violence, displacement, and a persistent lack of opportunities. The crisis is impacting children physically, psychologically, and socially.
Children affected by this emergency are showing many psychological symptoms, including withdrawal, anxiousness, fear, denial, anger, sadness, restlessness, and regression. They often experience sleeplessness, sadness, grief, shock, nightmares, and hyperactivity.[2] The prolonged displacement is severely impacting the psychosocial well-being, education, development and health of children. The number of children requiring support is increasing whilst parents and other caregivers who are also affected by the Syrian conflict are finding it difficult to support their children and seek the support they themselves need.
An assessment conducted by IMC-UNICEF in July 2013,[3] explored the impact of violence and displacement on conflict-affected adolescents in Za’atari refugee camp. The survey found that 76% of adolescents sampled were not in school, 32% lived in female headed households (FHH), and 3% were unaccompanied, all risk factors which could compound situations of psychosocial instability or vulnerability. The survey assessed locally-derived mental health problems, and found that of the local symptoms identified, children most often experienced hozzon (grief) and khof (fear), while they sometimes also experienced ekte’ab (depression), tawattor (tension), asabi (nervousness).[4] Adolescents in general, particularly girls, reported concerning symptoms of emotional problems and a significant number reported behavioural issues.
When asked about problems faced due to the camp life or war, the vast majority of adolescents responded that they faced problems in dealing with camp life, which negatively contributed to their psychosocial wellbeing. They also reported regularly experiencing fear, whether from living in the camp, of the war, or due to other specific risks and fears. The top self-identified priorities of adolescents were fear, feeling sad, grief from loss or separation, and child abuse. The assessment found that a large portion of the sampled adolescents coped with these stresses through withdrawing and crying, both demonstrating the need for structured psychosocial activities to cultivate positive coping, and support to enable children and adolescents to enhance self-protective skills and strategies.[5]
As part of Syria Regional Response Plan (RRP) and UNICEF’s Country Programme Action Plan, UNICEF Jordan Country Office has been working through its implementing partners to put in place age appropriate psychosocial support response targeting children and their families, both in camps and host communities, in order to strengthen their coping mechanisms and resiliency. The overall psychosocial support response is based on the Interagency Steering Committee (IASC) Guidelines on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS)[6], UNICEF’s Core Commitments for Children in Humanitarian Action[7] and CPWG Minimum Standards of Child Protection in Humanitarian Action.
The purpose of the psychosocial support response is to protect Syrian girls and boys from psychosocial distress, abuse, violence, exploitation and neglect, through community supported child friendly spaces and community based child protection mechanisms and processes. UNICEF and partners are working to provide structured activities that are carried out in a safe, child-friendly, inclusive and stimulating environment. All child protection interventions are integrating a psychosocial support response in order to ensure that Syrian children and their families have access to age appropriate psychosocial support.
The objective of the psychosocial support response is to work towards minimising risk factors and strengthening the protective environment by providing children and their family members with free, safe and confidential access to psychosocial support services through child and adolescent friendly spaces. UNICEF is supporting interventions to ensure that the following objectives are achieved for Syrian children and their families living in Jordan, namely;
• Normalising daily life and reconnecting children with their family members, friends and neighbours
• Fostering social connections and interactions, including in situations where children are separated from their family or community of origin
• Strengthening key child protection capacities (PSS, identification and referral of CP and GBV) in emergency-affected areas
• Establishing and enhancing well-functioning and effective coordination and referral mechanisms among national and international protection partners in emergency affected areas
• Providing psychosocial support to children and their family members
• Building on and encouraging children’s and community’s innate resilience to crisis
• Providing specialised and non-specialised psychosocial support children in need of such support
The IASC guidelines recognize that almost all war-affected and displaced children will need some sort of psychosocial support. While the majority of the children in such situations require non-specialised PSS, experience shows that a small number of children (5 to 10 per cent) require more focused, specialized support and approximately 3% of the children may suffer from severe mental disorders and require clinical intervention. The IASC guidelines recommend that these different support needs be provided in the context of the different, complementary layers of support. This approach considers children as active agents who engage with challenges related to their psychosocial well-being and make an effort to cope and adapt to manage those challenges. The response based on IASC guidelines reinforces social and environmental factors that help children regain healthy psychosocial development and resilience in the face of challenging circumstances. Material and social needs, along with safety and security, are key factors to ensure psychosocial well-being and are recognized as part of effective PSS.
UNICEF is supporting psychosocial support response targeting children and their families through a variety of partners who provide a layered response based on the IASC guidelines. The overall psychosocial support interventions cover preparedness, response and early recovery phases of the emergency. The response includes building capacities of the communities and frontline workers, provision of age appropriate services, integrating PSS in child protection intervention, and ensuring/supporting effective coordination in the sector. Services are offered to children and their families through a network of over 100 child and adolescent friendly spaces, with activities ranging from simple recreational activities, through playgrounds, to structured psychosocial support interventions aimed specifically at strengthening resiliency and coping mechanisms, to the provision of specialised PSS, and case management support for children who have suffered from psychological harm, including unaccompanied and separated children.
While keeping in mind the geopolitical situation in the region, it is likely that at a portion of the Syrian refugee population will continue to remain in Jordan for some time. While resources are anticipated to become increasingly scarce as the situation of displacement becomes protracted, it will be imperative to invest available resources into interventions which are effective in improving the psychosocial well-being of children and their families, and which build on local capacities and positive coping mechanisms in order to strengthen their sustainable in the longer term. Currently, UNICEF is helping children and their families to access psychosocial support services in camps and host communities through community supported child/adolescent friendly spaces and community based child protection committee in camps and host communities. Since the onset of Syrian crisis, UNICEF’s psychosocial support response has reached close to 200,000 children and 90,000 members of their families. Moving into 2014, UNICEF will continue to support efforts aimed at improving psychosocial well-being of children and their families and to strengthen resiliency and coping mechanisms.
2. PURPOSE
The main purpose of the evaluation is to generate substantive evidence based knowledge by identifying good practices and lessons learned from intended and unintended impact of psychosocial response. This evaluation is intended to unveil the nature of the change that has taken place in the lives of children, and to determine its significance on the psychosocial well-being of those children. The results from this assessment exercise will be highly useful to enable any adjustment/redirection that may be necessary for future UNICEF interventions as UNICEF and its implementing partners both move into 2015.
3. OBJECTIVES
The overall objective of this exercise is to determine the relevance, efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability of the psychosocial support interventions on well-being of Syrian refugee children in Jordan. The specific objectives of the exercise are;
A. To assess relevance of PSS response from the point of view of children/families/communities etc.
B. To assess the efficiency of the implementation process of the UNICEF’s psychosocial support response in Jordan, and to assess the cost of the response per unit of aggregation as compared to the cost being incurred by other similar interventions which are not supported by UNICEF with in Jordan
C. To assess the effectiveness of the implementation process of the UNICEF’s psychosocial support response in Jordan and to see if the programme achieved planned outcomes and outputs with regard to children’s psychosocial well-being; to assess intended and unintended changes on the psychosocial well-being of children, to determine how well the response addressed the priority problems of Syrian children, and also to assess the quality of the various services provided by all partners at the different levels of the IASC MHPSS pyramid.
D. To assess the sustainability of the results of the response in the absence of ongoing UNICEF support, by identifying the degree to which the PSS response has built on existing local capacities and coping mechanism, and a potential exit strategy that builds on local resources and capacities. What has been the impact of the programme on local networks and community based groups? How many volunteers/ community members have been mobilized and trained.
E. To assess the extent of coverage of psychosocial support interventions in relations to the presence of Syrian refugee children in different areas of Jordan – both in terms of geographic coverage, and numbers of children reached vs numbers of children in need.
F. To assess the effectiveness of the coordination of all agencies providing psychosocial support interventions for children in Jordan (i.e. beyond only UNICEF partners but in the sector as a whole), both in camps and host communities.
G. To assess the quality of UNICEF’s psychosocial response, in relation to the Interagency Steering Committee (IASC) Guidelines on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) and the CPWG Minimum Standards for Child Protection in Humanitarian Response, based on the Inter-agency Guide to the Evaluation of the Psychosocial Programming in Humanitarian Crises and other quality benchmarks including gender mainstreaming principles.
H. To assess the coherence of psychosocial support intervention with the UNICEF Core Commitments for Children in Humanitarian Action, CPWG Minimum Standards for Child Protection in Humanitarian Response, Syrian Regional Response Plan, No Lost Generation Strategy, and UNICEF Jordan’s Country Programme Document (2013-2017)
I. To determine the extent to which UNICEF/partners PSS response is providing an entry point to overall protection interventions to address CP&GBV issues, as well as entry points for education and youth interventions. To determine the extent to which extent the programme built on existing resources and capacities of communities.
J. To assess the appropriateness and social acceptability of the approach as implemented in Jordan and to determine beneficiary and stakeholder perceptions of the overall response, especially children, parents and communities.
K. To document main lessons learnt and propose recommendations to deliver PSS services in a more effective and efficient way, in particular suggesting options for more integrated programming (e.g. increased referrals to other CP response (as needed to address vulnerabilities and risks of violence, abuse, exploitation), schools, informal education and youth services, etc)) and for further harmonization and capacity development of partners.
4. SCOPE OF THE EVALUATION
The assessment will focus mainly on the interventions being directly implemented by UNICEF or by its implementing partners in four existing refugee camps (Zaatari, Cyber City, King Abdullah Park and EJC camps) and selected locations in seven governorates of Jordan since 2012. The overall PSS response for Syrian refugees in Jordan is being implemented through 50 child and adolescent friendly spaces and 11 recreational activity centres/playgrounds in camps, and 60 child and family protective places in host communities. On average, some 12,000 children, including Jordanian/Palestinian children, attend these safe spaces every week. Additionally, a specialised programme for more focused PSS is being implemented through case management services provided by three partners in camps and host communities.
The interventions by all partners of the UNICEF supported PSS response will be the target of this assessment. The team will be provided with a mapping of all UNICEF supported safe spaces for children and families. Additionally, the team will also receive copies of all the agreements, field visit reports, training manuals, results from pre and post questionnaires etc. While all stakeholder are important, special emphasis will be placed on ensuring that children (both boys and girls) who are direct beneficiaries of the interventions are heard, enabled to communicate their priorities and needs, and participate in the evaluation process. Other stakeholders whose participation will be important to assess the impact of the response include parents (both mothers and fathers) of those children who are participating on response activities. Local community leaders, frontline workers, volunteers working with the response, members of child protection committees, religious leaders, youth and social workers will also be consulted in assessing the impact of the response.